Fluorescence microscopy offers a unique approach to the study of living and fixed cells because of its sensitivity, specificity and versatility. Fluorescent light emitted from fluorescent probes attached to components of a specimen can be simultaneously detected as image and photometric data using the microscope, which provides the potential for qualitative and quantitative studies on the structure and function of the components. In recent years, increasingly elaborate fluorescence microscopy techniques, including fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (“FRAP”), fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (“FLIM”), fluorescence resonance energy transfer (“FRET”), fluorescence loss in photobleaching (“FLIP”) and total internal reflection fluorescence (“TIRF”) microscopy, just to name a few, have been developed to enable visualization and analysis of ever more complex events in cells, organelles and sub-organelle components within biological specimens. However, implementing these different microscopy techniques in the same fluorescence microscope involves focusing the excitation beam at different rear focal axial positions of the microscope objective lens and/or directing the excitation beams along a particular path through the microscope objective lens. One approach to addressing this issue has been to use fast rotatable mirrors to rapidly steer the beam when switching from one technique to another. However, steering the excitation beam in this manner limits use of the microscope to only one fluorescence microscopy technique at a time because the mirror can only be used to select one optical path at a time. For the above described reasons, engineers, scientists, and fluorescent microscope manufacturers continue to seek fast, efficient, and cost effective systems that enable a fluorescence microscope to simultaneously use different fluorescence microscopy techniques.